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I Take Dating Rejections Way Too Personally, And I Know I’m Not The Only One

After being ghosted and dealing with canceled dates, I found myself crying over random dudes. It’s exhausting, but moving past these feelings is a process. Here’s how I’m learning to let rejection roll off my back.

Here's a snapshot of what my love life has been like for the past few months. In December, a guy I went to high school with started messaging me on Facebook. That escalated to texting every day, phone dates, and him bringing up visiting me over Valentine's Day weekend (he was in the Midwest, I'm in New York City). A few days after he suggested the trip, he asked if he could come earlier than we'd planned. And a few days after that, he said he wouldn’t be able to make it until April, and actually, this wasn’t going to work and he couldn’t do it anymore. I was crushed.

Six weeks later, I met a guy I really liked through Tinder, which so rarely happens it’s like the unicorn of dating experiences. Everything was going great until we had sex and he ghosted me. I was devastated.

Soon after, a really cute guy from San Francisco messaged me on Tinder (we'd matched when I was in his area for a wedding). The West Coast was a little far to pursue anything serious, but I was just so happy to feel excited about someone else to get my mind off the ghoster. Coincidentally, it turned out the San Franciscan was going to be in New York City that weekend, and we made plans to meet when he arrived. When his plane landed, he said he was too tired to get together but asked if we could reschedule. I wrote back to let him knew when I was free and then…crickets.

I chalked it up to another ghosting, but not without worrying that I did something wrong, like somehow coming off as too desperate or too available in my one-line text about rescheduling. I wound up crying over yet another dating disappointment when the pain from the last ones was still so fresh.

Through it all, my friends were repeating the same thing, a dating mantra of sorts: "Don't take it personally." And sometimes, "You didn't even meet him. You can't take it personally."

Oh, but I can. Bad dating experiences prompt the voices in my head to chime in with, "You were rejected AGAIN. No one will ever love you. You’re going to be alone forever." The problem is, when you’re out there trying to meet someone on dating apps—and even IRL—hurtful stuff happens all the time. It’s exhausting and depressing to constantly take everything so personally.

For as long as I’ve been dating, I’ve been drawn to emotionally unavailable guys. I’ve primarily been single, mostly as an attempt to protect myself from this kind of pain, and the relationships that I have had have been chaotic and pretty excruciating. Because I’ve felt repeatedly hurt and rejected so many times by men who weren’t capable of being in healthy, nurturing relationships, I’ve internalized the (untrue) belief that love is something that’s for other people, but won’t ever work out for me. And the storylines in my mind—that I’m unlovable, that I’ll always be alone—are so deep-seated that it’s hard to see around them to any possibility other than that I was rejected, and it’s totally personal.

My friends keep insisting that it’s not, and I shouldn't take it as such. This is a lot easier said than done, but I'm finally coming around. So, what helps me actually not take it personally?

Honestly, almost nothing when I’m in the midst of an I’m-unlovable-and-I-must-have-done-something-wrong spiral. But there are two techniques that can sometimes give me a little bit of distance from my internal storylines. Over time, they can help ease the pain.

First, when I start hearing those voices in my head saying (OK, more like shouting), "Something you did ruined this!" or "This is all your fault," I try to question them.

"This sounds suspiciously like my old negative beliefs," I’ll tell myself. "Is this really true? Could there be any other possible explanation for this guy’s behavior that isn’t about something being wrong with me?"

Second, when I’m trying to consider other possible explanations for why a guy bailed or ghosted or cut and ran, I could, in trying to comfort myself, decide that he’s just an asshole. But I remind myself that most people are pretty wounded from childhood and past relationships, and they're going around acting out their wounds on each other. This is a way to comfort myself without deciding that I hate men, and also feel compassionate for them while still being kind and gentle to myself.

Now, when a guy effusively expresses interest in me then abruptly changes his mind or ghosts after sex, I can think about how it’s likely that given his particular emotional wounds, he hit a wall for intimacy and had to retreat. And given my particular emotional wounds, I experience this as intensely painful rejection and abandonment. On my better days, I can observe this phenomenon with curious detachment and think, "Hmmm, look at how this thing happened, isn’t that so interesting?" instead of what I usually do: sobbing uncontrollably while manically downloading meditation apps.

I still struggle with this. I expect that I will continue to for some time to come, if not forever. But between my therapist who helps me question my negative beliefs, my friends who keep telling me to not take things personally, and my own relentless work on myself to shake loose from these painful storylines, I’m making some progress. While it’s still hard for me to not take it personally when a guy I know and like does something insensitive, I can let it roll off my back when someone I don’t know does, even when he’s cute and seems interesting. Like a few weeks ago when another Tinder match I hadn’t met yet cancelled a date, promising to reschedule, and I never heard from him again, I didn’t even a shed a tear—or download one meditation app.

In another unicorn of dating experiences, the guy who ghosted me after sex wound up un-ghosting me. We talked about what had happened, and he explained why he’d been out of touch. And guess what? IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. He’s divorced and realized that he wasn’t ready to be in a serious relationship yet, and admitted that he had his own patterns he needed to work on, like, for instance, withdrawing.

While it was extremely helpful and comforting to hear that from him, I can’t count on this always happening. Most of the time when guys disappear like that, they’re really just gone for good. In the absence of reassurance from a man, one day I want to be able to tell myself that it’s not about me—and believe it.

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